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Tag Archives: Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

Fifty years ago today, the Summer of Love was in the offing for 16-year-old Wendy D. of Allegheny County, Pa., the home of Pittsburgh, three smaller cities and a bevy of boroughs and townships – but also a summer of love troubles, as often happens in teen romances. I’m sure she was vaguely aware of the former when she wrote the entry, but as for the latter? She wasn’t clairvoyant. (If she was, my hunch is she wouldn’t have continued to see Tom, who was but one of several suitors. Let’s just say things don’t work out so well between them and leave it at that…for now.)

The movie they saw, A Man for All Seasons, was released on December 12, 1966. In today’s world, of course, all but the biggest of blockbusters have left the theaters within five months and are prepping for their blu-ray/DVD release and/or PPV debut. Back then? Things stuck around. Movies routinely started small, at select theaters, and slowly widened in scope, hopscotching the country and media markets. (Mass distribution, where a movie opens on hundreds – if not thousands – of screens at a time, didn’t become commonplace until 1974 and The Trial of Billy Jack.)

The top TV shows for the 1966-’67 season were (in order) Bonanza, The Red Skelton Hour, Andy Griffith Show, Lucy Show and Jackie Gleason Show. The Lawrence Welk Show, which was in a four-way tie for No. 10, was a few spots higher than The Smother Brothers Comedy Hour.

On the music front: According to the Weekly Top 40, the Supremes’ “The Happening” was the No. 1 single on the charts.

I featured that song in the April 22nd, 1967 Top 5, of course. And, between that entry and the one for April 2nd, I’ve spotlighted the top five songs on this week’s Top 40 chart fairly recently. As a result, I’ll be digging deep into the chart for today’s countdown.

And, with that caveat out of the way, here’s today’s Top 5, May 13, 1967 (via Weekly Top 40).

1) The Happenings – “I Got Rhythm.” The No. 9 song this week is this…kitschy delight? It was one of four Top 40 singles the group scored from 1966 through ’68. This one, like their 1966 hit “See You in September,” topped out at No. 3.

2) The Mamas & the Papas – “Creeque Alley.” Jumping from No. 44 to No. 22 is this self-mythologizing song, which tells of the formation of the group.

3) Jefferson Airplane – “Somebody to Love.” Holding steady at No. 31 in its seventh week on the charts is this Summer of Love anthem from the Airplane, which would eventually fly into the Top 10. Here they are performing it at the Monterey Pop Festival on June 17th.

4) The Who – “Happy Jack.” One of the week’s Power Plays is this now-classic song, which jumped from No. 51 to No. 41.

5) The Marvelettes – “When You’re Young and in Love.” Another of the week’s Power Plays is this lovely Van McCoy-penned song, which would eventually reach No. 23. An interesting piece of trivia: It’s the group’s only single to chart in the U.K. Another piece of trivia: It was Wendy D.’s theme song… nah, I’m making that last bit up. But it should’ve been!

And two bonuses, both pulled from the “New This Week” section:

6) Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell – “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” The first of the many classic Marvin & Tammi duets. Here, they perform the Ashford & Simpson-penned song on The Tonight Show:

7) The Grass Roots – “Let’s Live for Today.” Debuting at No. 87 is this ‘60s classic, which would eventually make it to No. 8. Who knew that it began life as an Italian pop song written by an ex-pat Brit beat group? Not me. Wikipedia gives the rundown of its complicated history.

Thanksgiving night, after a wonderful get-together with family, Diane and I continued our trek through Good Girls Revolt. One episode centered on New Year’s Eve of 1969: As the ‘60s came to an end, Patti (Genevieve Angelson) and editor Finn (Chris Diamantopoulos) concluded that the decade had been about suppression and repression; the ‘70s, they predicted, would be about expansion. Then, at about 10:50pm, I received a message from iTunes: Rumer’s This Girl’s in Love: A Bacharach and David Songbook was available for download.

It’s a lilting and lush set; the music possesses the grace of Audrey Hepburn, soul of Dusty Springfield and vocal finesse of the 5th Dimension, if that makes sense, and evokes the era in which the songs were born while remaining firmly rooted in the present. While one can imagine Rumer singing, say, “One Less Bell to Answer” on The Tonight Show in 1969, one can also imagine her swaying to the same music on The Tonight Show next month. At its best, music transcends time and space; and this set does just that.

Anyway, the juxtaposition of Good Girls Revolt and This Girl’s in Love (and, perhaps, too much turkey) led me to reflection – and to the realization that Patti and Finn, in their rush to pass judgment on the ’60s, were wrong. The decade was not a time of suppression or repression. To the contrary. It was a time when the collective American mindset pushed past a centuries-old prejudice (race) and began to do the same with another (gender). That’s not to say prejudice was eliminated; far from it. But the majority of folks realized it was wrong.

Consider this clip from Petula, a TV special starring British pop singer Petula Clark that aired on NBC on April 2, 1968:

The moment near the end, when Petula puts her arm on Harry Belafonte’s? Believe it or not, it spurred a controversy. A vice president of Chrysler, which was sponsoring the show, demanded that another take be used due to the “interracial touching.” Petula Clark and her husband, the special’s producer, said no; NBC sided with them; and the special, when it aired, was a hit. But if that touch had occurred a decade earlier? NBC likely would’ve cut the song or, if not, many TV stations, primarily in the South, would’ve refused to air the show.

That said, despite the decade’s advances, life wasn’t great. Two days after that special aired, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated; two months later, Robert Kennedy was killed; four months later, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago turned violent; six months later, Richard Nixon was elected president; and, all the while, the Vietnam War raged – more than 16,592 American soldiers died and 87,388 were wounded that year.

When we strip the gauzy nostalgia from the reality of any time, we’re left with this: What often made the time wonderful was less day-to-day life and more the promise of what had yet to come. It’s why succeeding generations continue to embrace the music of the ‘60s and ‘70s, I think – despite the tumult of the ‘60s and woes of the ‘70s, the messages that powered much of the music were hopeful. And, by and large, we’re a hopeful lot.

Which leads to today’s Top 5: The Promise of Tomorrow, circa 1970 and Billboard. These are the year’s top singles…